About every three to six months IT moves printers, upgrades printer and otherwise makes printer changes necessary.
Most of our printers are HP with jetdirect cards (port 9100). There is a printer server. In UNIX this means translating windows shared printers, naming conventions and security features, through a rather cryptic graphic interface. Doable once in a long while, not worth it every three months…
I tend to connect directly to the printer’s IP address at 9100 and let jetdirect sort out queues and print management.
This also works on windows XP laptops. What you are doing is configuring a local printer, connected to a TCP/IP port.
To do this , open Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes. Right-click and select “Add Printer”. Click “Next”. Select “Local printer” .
From this click “Next”
Then select “Create a new port” and from the drop down menu, type of port is “Standard TCP/IP Port”.
You will hit the opening screen for the “Add Standard TCP/IP Port Wizard”. Click “Next” and then enter the IP address for the printer. You can use the DNS name, I tend not to, I ususally use an IP address. How do you find the IP address? Most modern HP printers have a menu on the printer that allows you to go to “Information” -> “Print Configuration”. The IP address will be in that configuration.
Click “Next”.. This step seems to take a few minutes. Once it returns you get back a message that the detected device type cannot be determined. Drop down and select “Hewlett Packard Jet Direct” and then click next…
Select “Next”. From here the installation is basically the same as every other printer – Select manufacturer “HP” and then scroll to the closest match driver for your printer. I’ve had good luck using an HP Color Laserject 4500 driver for an HP4525 printer for example.